Many have been claiming how Africa’s population will be the biggest in the world in a few years, this is a laudable claim, but the Continent also faces tremendous challenges with its demographics. A few of the factors are internal while the others are attached to the global economy.
Africa’s Projected Population Growth.
Africa’s population is projected to reach 2.5 billion people by 2050 according to organisations like the UN and the International Monetary fund. They even claim that this could be Africa’s century, but that century is being threatened before our very own eyes by the declining population everywhere around the world. From Russia, where President Putin has already recorgnised the need for Russians to have more babies and programs instituted to support this, to Japan, Europe, United States and even China.
Africa’s Labour Export To The West.
This situation of a declining population everywhere in the advanced economies will place a huge pressure on the African continent as they will seek to have their economies continue to grow. This is at the expense of the African Economy. We have seen this recently when the Germany Chancellor reached a deal with the Kenyan President to export 200,000 Africans from Kenya to Germany, both in high skilled and middle skilled category. Of course, this is something the Kenyan and Germany leaders paint as a positive, but it speaks to absolute failure by the African Leadership Side. Failure to create condition to use this huge resource in rapidly developing the African Continent.
Malawi has also signed a contract to export Africans to Israel to work as farm workers in Israel’s agriculture even though Africa still has food importation challenges and has not succeeded at feeding itself. What is tragic, the Israel import of African labour looks akin to absolute slavery due to the contractual conditions surrounding the arrangement. The Africans imported into Israel are limited to working only in the farms to which they have been sent and prohibited from any other form of enterprise. This is denial of basic rights to a people. While Africans were sold by chiefs in the 15th to 19th Century, they are today being sold by the so-called presidents. In his address on the matter the Kenyan president said.
“Together with Bore, we are signing bilateral labour agreements to export Kenyan labour. Every week, we want an export of about 3,000 to 5,000 people to provide labour all over the world so that they can bring us money to transform this country,”
If this is not a failure of leadership, I don’t know what it is. If this is not selling your people into slavery in this modern era, we can’t define it any other way. Africans can’t keep paying for the failures of capitalism and at the same time continue to be excluded from its gains.
Contraceptive and Observations by African Heads of State.
As if this is not enough, Africa faces population pressure reduction from the same west who keep promoting contraceptives on the continent, this is something which attracted the attention of Late President John Pombe Magufuli before his death, he encouraged the Africans in Tanzania to have more Children after recorgnising that a low population has negative consequences for the economy. Another president Museveni from Uganda has noticed that Africa doesn’t lack resources to take care of its people, in fact Africa’s land can support 12 times more people in its current state.
India is 12 times smaller than Africa yet the two have the same population. So, there is no need for western NGOs to constantly bombard Africa with contraceptives. This is going to affect Africa’s population growth. It has been a norm for western institutions with their structural racist approach to ridicule what Africans say but these observations on population have economic consequences and these consequences are being felt by the same western countries hence, they turn to Africa for Labour. So, while they force their way on Africa with birth control, the same people are poaching Africa’s population for labour to develop their countries with attractions of higher wages. Someone would assume that there is a purposeful strategy of depopulating Africa and making its people servants of the same west which developed through enslavement of Africans.
Time Spent in Education Institutions.
As the Literacy rate in Africa continues to grow, the next generation is going to continue spending more time in education institutions, this is increasingly delaying birth and will affect Africa’s population growth. Today many of the young people would prefer to get a bachelor’s degree and desire to have a master’s or even a PhD degree. This argument is no excuse for not giving people education, it is rather an observation of reality which can be mitigated with a purposeful approach to other causes of population reduction such as limiting migration from Africa.
Civil Wars
Another factor in play in the wars on the continent, poor living conditions which bring about health conditions and early death. These tragedies while not spoken about in many corners of the Continent and the World, wars present a real threat to the Continent, many of which are started or catalysed by the same people imposing contraceptives on Africa. Since the Biafra War, Sierra Leone, Liberia Civil war, Sudan, Rwandan Civil war and genocide etc., over 10 million Africans have died due to these wars. This is a Silent threat.
Way Forward.
We have to be purposeful about our Goals as African people, we want to grow Africa’s economy in the next 20 years to a GDP per Capita of 22,000 USD, this requires that we retain our young labour to build the continent, this requires that we attract back our skilled labour to contribute to the rapid development of our continent. Africa risks falling behind and loosing another century and Industrial revolution, this is something we can’t afford to let happen. We OfCourse recorgnise that the existing political infrastructure has failed to craft a population policy towards the Continent, a policy integral to Africa’s rapid economic growth and massive employment creation in order for us to retain our labour.
This is the very reason why everyone should support the African Continental Unity Party. Aside this organisation, we are yet to have an organisation so purposeful in its approach to reconstruct the African Continent and rebuilding it, yet the African Population is one of the most required resources in this endeavour in addition to Africa’s current GDP of 3.5 trillion dollars and the over 700 trillion dollars of material resources.
Projects like the African Railway Triangle Network Master Plan (ARTNMP) which the author has proposed and also presented before the AfCFTA Secretariate would go a long way to step this Population outflow, labour wastage and loss across the African Continent.